A Glitzy Expansion Plan For Bradley — That Might Never Be Needed

Following a proud history of expansions at Bradley International Airport that began in 1971 with the opening of the airport's international building, the airport this month released a long-term plan to tear down the old Murphy Terminal and replace it with an ultra-modern terminal that will meet increasing demand for air travel.

Consultants hired by the airport were optimistic about passenger growth at Bradley over the next 16 years, saying that by 2028, New England's second-largest airport would need nearly twice as many gates as it has now, including some for larger planes.

The report also calls for a new parking garage with as many as 2,600 spaces and room to put the car rental facilities right at the airport, in easy walking distance from the gates.

It's a glitzy plan with data that appears to back it up, but there's a problem: The growth estimates were out of date when the report came out July 2 and appear to be far too optimistic.

Outside experts, including the Federal Aviation Administration, now say Bradley will not even return to its 2005 peak by 2028. Even airport officials concede the numbers could be overly rosy — and they're recasting the forecasts this summer.

The report says the plan is long-term, but if the lower estimates are correct, a new terminal would not be needed at all in the coming generation.

There is near-unanimous agreement among experts that investing in a regional airport as robust and inviting as possible makes good economic sense. Parts of the new plan — demolition of the 1952 Murphy Terminal, also known as Terminal B, as well as moving the rental car businesses onto the airport property and redirecting the roadway circuit — do not depend on higher passenger traffic and could be worth their cost over the next few years.

The document, released July 2, pegs the cost of tearing down the terminal, rerouting roads and building a central power plant at $50 million. Building the first part of a new terminal would range in price from $580 million to $600 million, the report said.

There is no cost estimate for a garage.

The consulting firm, InterVISTAS, projected 81 percent more trips at the airport by 2028, justifying the need for an additional 19 gates at the new terminal. The existing Terminal A, which now has 23 gates, would be reconfigured for 20 gates, some for jumbo aircraft that are not currently using Bradley.

However, the Federal Aviation Administration, which forecasts passenger traffic estimates annually, projects only 23 percent more passenger trips at Bradley in the same time period. A separate FAA study of growth forecasts through 2020 at the six largest New England airports showed that Bradley would be by far the slowest to gain passengers.

And at least one independent expert who studies airport expansions agrees with the more conservative FAA estimates.

Different Conclusions

The estimates in the Bradley plan were made in 2010, and the FAA estimates are from late 2011, released early this year.

The discrepancy could be partly because the number of passenger trips fell sharply from a peak of 7.4 million in 2005 to 5.3 million in 2009, the depth of the recession, and the recovery had only barely begun in 2010. At the time, many people were predicting a more robust recovery.

When asked about the discrepancy, Judd Everhart, spokesman for the state Department of Transportation, said the report's estimates were old and "reflected the appropriate market and economic conditions at the time, and when Bradley traffic was on the rise."

Everhart declined to comment on why the report was released with outdated growth forecasts.

Kenneth Currie, executive vice president of InterVISTAS, the Bethesda, Md., firm that did the forecast in the Bradley expansion plan — but not the whole report — said that in 2010, economists didn't anticipate as slow of a recovery, high fuel prices and consolidation of the airline industry.

"If you went back and looked at what economists were saying about economic growth and unemployment and fuel prices in 2010," said Currie, who did not work directly on the Bradley forecast, "I think you'll find that they were remarkably bullish compared to what actually happened."

Changes in the airline industry, such as reduced flights to small and midsize hubs, combined with the slower-than-expected recovery, may have made predictions especially difficult.

Another possible reason for the discrepancy, according to University of Hartford economics Professor Jeffrey P. Cohen, a Federal Reserve visiting scholar who studies the economics of airport expansion, is that the people preparing expansion reports for airports tend to favor expansion.

"One might have more confidence in studies of the economic impact of airport expansions in which the authors are less likely to have a political or economic stake in the results," Cohen wrote in a paper and reiterated in a recent interview.